Shoot-to-kill: police say more mistakes likely

More innocent victims may be shot dead as result of Scotland Yard's controversial shoot-to-kill policy against suicide bombers, senior police officers have admitted.

As the Crown Prosecution Service weighs murder charges against the officers involved in the July shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, Chris Fox, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said: 'We are doing everything we can... but the probability is that there may be mistakes.

'I won't accept mistakes, but I think we have got to be ready for them to happen,' said Fox, before tomorrow's Metropolitan Police Federation conference on the use of lethal force. Victims of the London bombings are expected among the audience.

Fox's admission is the first time a senior police officer has so explicitly said that members of the public could be accidentally shot as a result of 'shoot-to-kill'. He said the public had to weigh the challenge posed by suicide bombers against the difficulties faced by police firearms officers. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, defends the policy as an important option.

The latest twist in the debate over 'shoot-to-kill' comes amid new details into the IPCC investigation into the shooting of de Menezes. It has emerged that the IPCC inquiry never received the CCTV footage of his shooting at Stockwell on 22 July. Security cameras did not record the 27-year-old's last moments before he was shot seven times. However, IPCC investigators believe they have accumulated enough evidence to suggest that offences may have been committed.

The Tube carriages damaged on 7 July have been crushed and buried, The Observer can reveal. Before the carriages were 'securely disposed', passengers and families involved in the terrorist attacks were allowed to view them to pay their respects.

Security services say that another terror attack on London, involving a cell of four Britons, has been foiled in the past fortnight, making it the third thwarted assault on the capital since 7 July. A security source said that the type and frequency of the failed attacks should be interpreted as an 'indication' that the threat level remains high.

Such warnings will be underlined tomorrow by Blair, who will stress that a serious threat exists during the run-up to Christmas.

Blair wants public vigilance to remain as high as possible during the festive season. However, it is the comments by Acpo president Fox over the Met's shoot-to-kill strategy that will be most controversial. He will argue that the very nature of suicide bombers means that firearms officers need to make life-or-death judgments very quickly.

Fox said: 'If they [suicide bombers] are just going to press two electrical connections together, then you don't have much time.

'At Tube stations, bus stations and crowded shopping centres, they don't have time to actually talk, negotiate or get closer views'.